Graduate School (1978-1980)

I loved being at the Rhode Island School of Design, and taking photographs in the magical light of Providence. There were nine students in my first year class, and we were together often; working in the communal darkrooms, critiquing each others work, spending our days wandering around town photographing, and our evenings hanging at each other houses, drinking beer and talking photo.

We participated in weekly photo critiques with our insightful and supportive teacher, Wendy Snyder MacNeil, and attended Bill Parker's Photo Iconography class that concentrated on photo aesthetics and the history of photography. But primarily we spent our time taking photos and working in the darkroom.

Soon after arriving in Providence I switched from black and white to shooting and printing in color after taking Paul Krot’s Color Photography course. I loved how black and white emphasized the human condition, but as my work moved in a more formal direction I felt that color added an additional dimension, as well as a jolt to the work. My photographs were becoming formally more sophisticated, yet towards the end of my first year at RISD, I was starting to become disillusioned with the images I was making, and I felt the work was becoming emotionally distant from the subjects I was photographing. I was overthinking my photographs. It became clear that I needed to loosen up both visually and emotionally while photographing, and when I did, I became much happier with the direction the work began to take.

Teaching was also an important element of the RISD philosophy. In our first year as grad students we assisted an Intro Photography course, and in our second year we became the class’s primary teacher. I enjoyed teaching, and would continue to do so until 2001, when I gave it up to freelance full time. I also began exhibiting my work both nationally and internationally.

In the spring of 1980 I received my Masters of Fine Arts degree in photography, and eighteen months later, after teaching at Rhode Island Community College for a year, I moved to Los Angeles to find out what the real world had to offer.

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